An alliance of automakers and utilities plans to develop a communications platform that allows utilities and electric cars to exchange information.

An alliance of automakers and utilities plans to develop a communications platform that allows utilities and electric cars to exchange information.

Photo: John Raoux, Associated Press

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An electric car uses a charging station using a level 2 charger on Polk Street across from City Hall in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, November 19, 2013.

An electric car uses a charging station using a level 2 charger on Polk Street across from City Hall in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, November 19, 2013.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

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Communications platform would link electric cars, utilities

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Power companies need some way to talk to the growing number of electric cars plugging into the grid.

And it would help if all the cars, and all the companies, spoke the same language.

Now, a broad alliance of automakers and utilities plans to create a lingua franca for electric vehicles. Their goal: build a single communications platform that will let utilities glean information from and send commands to electric cars.

The benefits could be big.

If too many plug-in cars charge up at the same time in the same neighborhood, they can overload the local transformer, especially if electricity demand in the area is already high. The communications system envisioned by the new alliance would let utilities stagger charging times for their customers' EVs, as long as those customers agree.

More than that, however, a unified communications platform could be a building block for a smarter electric grid. Utilities could eventually use electric cars as batteries, not just holding power but feeding it back onto the grid when needed - to help balance renewable power or to prevent blackouts in case of emergency.

"They now have, essentially, grid storage at their fingertips," said Dave McCreadie, director of electric car infrastructure for Ford Motor Co. "Plug-in vehicles can absolutely play a big role in that."

Ford is one of eight automakers participating in the new alliance, which includes Pacific Gas and Electric Co., 14 other utility companies and the Electric Power Research Institute, a kind of utility-industry think tank known for tackling difficult technical issues. The alliance will be announced Tuesday at the Plug-In 2014 electric car conference in San Jose.

Most of the world's big automakers have joined the alliance, with BMW, Chrysler, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi and Toyota already participating. Notably absent from the list are Nissan, makers of the popular electric Leaf, and Tesla Motors of Palo Alto.

Nissan and Tesla did not respond by press time Monday.

Mark Duvall, a director at the Electric Power Research Institute, said any and all automakers are welcome to join the effort. That's the point, after all, creating one communications platform rather a dozen.

"You don't have to do something different for Ford, for Nissan," Duvall said. "We create sort of a Rosetta Stone to communicate with all of them in one format."

The group has already created a basic version of the communications system and will test it this year with the help of California's three large, investor-owned utilities, all of which are part of the alliance. Roughly a third of the 225,000 plug-in cars sold in the United States in recent years reside in California.

The idea of giving a utility company control over their car's charging times won't appeal to all drivers of electric vehicles. Utilities will probably need to offer a reduced rate on electricity as a way to entice people to sign up. Utility customers will also benefit if the companies are able to avoid upgrading transformers and other elements of the grid to handle the increased load from electric cars.

"Our studies have shown that if the utilities can do a little bit of judicious management of electric car charging loads, nothing very heavy-handed, the customers can get everything they want, and the utilities can deal with very large numbers of electric vehicles without a lot of expensive changes," Duvall said.